


Show Your Face

by kaktos



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: F/M, Gen, Haircuts, Named Lone Wanderer, Past Character Death, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 15:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14191821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaktos/pseuds/kaktos
Summary: Butch cuts the Lone Wanderer's hair. Also, they absolutely do not discuss their emotions, but they probably should.





	Show Your Face

**Author's Note:**

> you ever start something and you're so pumped and then you slowly just lose all hope/faith/motivation? anyway, here ya go, two emotionally constipated teenage orphans navigate nothing at all in an empty house.
> 
> 8/6/18: renamed from “inside a beautiful memory replaying...” to its current title.

After what happened at the Jefferson Memorial, she let her hair grow out. It wasn’t too much of a disadvantage--she hardly ever engaged in close-quarters combat--but her hair turned shaggy and wild, unkempt and usually unwashed.

 Once, at the one school dance the Overseer permitted, Judith let Amata fix her hair. It was long then, too, and it fell in waves over her shoulders. If Butch were being honest, he thought it was...nice. Pretty, maybe. A welcomed change of pace, at least, given that Judith typically pinned her hair up in an efficient little bun that gave her the unfortunate look of one of those stuffy types he’d seen in the holodisk movies the vault supplied.

 But her hair now wasn’t anything like that and she’d stopped pinning it up altogether.

 If asked, he would say it didn't bother him or that he didn't notice. Then, when it became too bad and feigning ignorance was no longer plausible, he claimed he cared only because it disturbed his sensibilities as a barber, as a man with great hair, as a man who had to be seen with a little girl with a rat’s nest on her head.

 Judith didn't care, though. She noticed, certainly, because often it would fall in her face and leave dirt. But beauty wasn't her goal--her goal had been finding her dad and now her goal was avenging him. Her goal was getting one last hurrah out of what was left of her life and she could do that without good looks.

 Butch began scheming. During a visit to the Underworld (which still made shivers run up his spine), he bargained with Snowflake for a pair of scissors, only lightly rusted. He cautiously brings the subject up--or tries to. Subtlety is lost on Butch.

 “So you gonna do something ‘bout that mess you call hair?” he asks, leaning against the wall of the house they’re resting in for the night. They’re headed to Little Lamplight, where a bunch of brats have shut themselves in a cave apparently. He’s less than excited to be heading into a cave after living in a vault for so long, but Judith insists on it.

 “There’s nothing wrong with my hair.” Her voice is flat, uninterested in Butch’s question or maybe even his existence.

 “It’s a fucking mess,” he tries again. “You got a mole rat living in there?”

 It’s a joke, or something like it, but she doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even smile. He hasn’t seen her smile in so long. Butch didn’t care before; he was her bully for years, tormenting her and Amata for no other reason than there’s nothing to do in a vault with a dwindling population. Now, though, grown up and out in the Wasteland--well, maybe he feels a little differently. Judith isn’t a gangling ten year old in a vault suit anymore, she’s a tall and lean woman who has led him on more adventures in the last month than he’d ever experienced in the nineteen years before.

 So maybe he feels a little differently about her.

 He gives it one last try, putting all jokes aside and finally being blatant. “Can I cut your hair?”

 For a long moment, she’s silent. Then: “why?”

 “You look like shit,” he says, which isn’t a lie but also isn’t what he wants to say. He wants to say something nicer, but his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth when he tries.

 Her mouth almost twitches into a real frown for just a moment. Instead, she sighs and remains straight faced. Butch doesn’t know what depression is, doesn’t know the signs and barely knows the word, but the truth of Judith’s situation itches at the back of his head.

 “Sure,” she finally answers. “Whatever.”

 The only chair in the rundown house is lacking the majority of its upholstery, but it will have to do. Judith settles in the chair and waits for Butch. He stands behind her, thinking about what to do. Cutting it would be easier if it were wet. That’s no reason to waste drinking water, though, and there’s no river nearby to take a dip in.

 He starts with combing it out, using his own comb, the only one at his disposal. It catches every tangle, pulling her head with it often, and Judith lets out little grunts and pained breaths. As children, Butch would take plenty of pleasure in causing her pain, but now he tries to slowly smooth out her hair in the least painful way possible. It’s not an easy process; in general, hair in the Wasteland is brittle and dry, washing it properly a difficult task. Butch manages to untangle it, though, after what seems like hours.

 With her long hair combed and neat(-ish), Judith reminds him of being young and in the vault. She seems smaller and more feminine. She looks like the girl he’d shove into a wall while Wally Mack laughed.

 Judith isn’t that girl anymore, though. The Judith before never wielded a gun like an extension of herself and she hardly spoke, the antithesis of the Judith he now follows across the Wasteland. Butch cuts her hair up to her chin, short and neat and practical. It fits her well and compliments the sharp point of her chin.

 As he cuts her hair, Judith watches the cut pieces fall the floor around her. The only sound that can be heard is the snipping of the scissors and the shuffling of Butch’s feet. It crosses her mind that this is _intimate_ , in its own weird way. Sometimes they’ll graze hands when passing ammunition, but that’s practical and short lived, nothing like the way Butch’s hands touch her now. Now, he holds her hair and she can feel the back of his knuckles slide against her neck as he moves around her. This isn’t practical, it’s unnecessary--and it’s comforting.

 When Butch finishes cutting her hair, he takes a step back and grins.

 “There! No more rat’s nest.”

 There’s no mirror around to show her his good work. Butch shuffles around the chair to face Judith, who hasn't stood up.

 Just as he’s about to say something else, he notices why she hasn’t stood up. Her shoulders are shaking, barely perceptible, and--she’s crying. She’s crying a lot, actually, and silently. Briefly, Butch wonders if she does this often, if he just misses it.

 “Are you--?”

 Judith sniffles, the first sound from her.

 “Hey,” Butch tries again. “Are you...You doin’ alright?”

 She stands up very suddenly and faces away from him, tears still falling down her face, pooling under her jaw.

 Her voice is stiff as she says, “let’s set up our beds.”

 Their beds are hardly anything more than patchwork sleeping bags and won’t take but a moment to lay out, but Butch recognizes that this is a moment he can’t handle. The raw emotion--he fumbles with it in regards to himself, always has, and he doubts he can face it anymore with another person.

 Later, when he’s settling into his sleeping bag while Judith takes first watch, he finally speaks.

 “You’re not the only orphan.” He knows it’s the wrong thing to say.

 Judith looks at him for a long time, but it feels like she’s looking past him. Then, something like a smile appears on her face. (Her face is dusty and he can see the streaks her tears made clearly in the moonlight shining through a nearby busted window.)

 “You’re right.”

 “Those kids at Lantern--”

 “Little Lamplight.”

 “Whatever. They’re orphans, too, right? Maybe you can just be Queen of the Orphans.”

 It’s easier to place it on strangers than admit what he knows they’re both thinking: Butch is an orphan, too. He never had a father, and Judith never had a mother, and now they each have neither. It’s new to be alone, for both of them.

 They should talk about it, how much it hurts and how lonely and scared they feel all the time. But neither are particularly skilled at talking about their feelings. For a long, quiet moment, they just stare at one another.

 “Goodnight, Butch.” Judith sharply turns away.

 “Night.”

 He remains watching her until his exhaustion overtakes him, slowly and gently, and when he dreams he dreams of that long ago school dance, how soft everything used to be.


End file.
